"O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself
a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams."
- Hamlet
Act II scene ii

21 April 2012

Mistake

After all of that effort, risking our lives on the open sea, it turns out that the woman living alone on Pulau Bada Island is not in fact the elusive Katherine de Chevalle at all. She's in fact a marine biologist from the University of California gathering data for her PhD thesis on the sex life of leatherback turtles. She's called Carrie Liebowicz from Dayton, Ohio.

Carrie's living in a large tent in the coconut plantation back from the beach. She kindly made a nice meal of rice and fried turtle eggs for me, Thuza and Maung before we set off back for Blogland. I feel so stupid. I could have sworn I'd located Katherine's island but the old Burmese fisherman clearly needs his stupid eyes testing.

Thank God the old lifeboat got us safely back to Blogland. It was almost dark when we tied up at the wharf. Back in the social club I ordered a large brandy and checked to see if there were any comments after my last blogpost - "Found". There was this puzzling comment from Earl Gray of Trelawnyd:- "YP please do me a favour - WRITE A BOOK ON A SIMILAR SUBJECT".

What the...?

Instead I retired to my new home where I am gathering quite a collection of animal friends. Well, no other bloggers made it here! I have acquired several Burmese chickens - mostly avian flu rescue hens from an egg farm on the outskirts of Rangoon. And there's a bantam cockerel called Clegg who crows like the devil every morning then spends the rest of the day following Dave, the other cockerel, as he struts around the compound. Doris the bean goose has become friendly with Henry the peafowl and Hilda the scaly-breasted partridge spends most of her time squawking under my wooden verandah with a long-billed partridge called Stan. But at the end of the day there's nothing I appreciate more than a slithery hug on my bamboo rocking chair from Brenda the Burmese python. She's so affectionate. And as I rocked, I wondered where Katherine could be...

John Gray and I are probably the only ones who will think your zoo is wonderful. As long as the python doesn't eat MY chickens. Oh, and Daphne might still come because, after all, there are beaches and lots and lots of water. Still waiting on my passport. Beginning to suspect government intervention of some sort. How could they have found out?

ARCTIC FOX You mean you don't like Brenda or was it something else I said.JENNY Don't worry. The python is rather shy.SHOOTING PARROTS Personally, I don't sex pythons! But each to their own. Does Mrs Parrots know about your bestiality?JAN BLAWAT How could they have found out what? That you threaten cold callers with genital mutilation? Or that you have thought bad thoughts about the US government? Where's Joseph McCarthy when you need him?

Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.